The Ruined City (46 page)

Aureste transmitted an inquiry with his eyes.

“There is something here that troubles me,” observed Innesq.

“You’ve always had a finicking appetite, but there’s no cause for complaint here. You can’t say it isn’t appetizing and well prepared.”

“I cannot say so because I have not tasted.”

“Grant me patience. You don’t like the way it
looks
?”

“I do not. What is in this dish?”

“I’m not certain. I think it’s frogs or some such thing that the lads caught by the gross. They were altogether delighted with themselves. Do
you
know what this is?” Aureste addressed the question to Zovaccio.

Zovaccio shook his head.

Aureste raised a finger, and a servant was instantly at his side.

“What is the principal ingredient in this dish?” he inquired.

“Newts, so please you, Magnifico. Leastways that’s what
we think. Maybe salamanders. Some were saying four-legged water worms.”

“Are there any left whole?” asked Innesq.

“Plenty, Master Innesq. We’re keeping a bucket of ’em alive in water, so they’ll be good and fresh for breakfast.”

“Bring me one, if you please.”

The servant bowed and retired. Moments later he was back, small creature in hand. Innesq took the animal and examined it closely. His face changed.

The alteration caught Aureste’s full attention. Never in all his life had he witnessed his brother’s serenity so violently transformed. Never had he beheld such a look of unalloyed dismay, even horror, upon Innesq’s face.

“Do not eat,” Innesq commanded.

Aureste and Zovaccio set down their spoons at once.

“Poisonous?” Aureste demanded. One hand instinctively moved to press his belly. No fires burning there—yet.

“Worse.” Bending from his wheeled chair, Innesq set the captive amphibian gently down on the ground, and watched it scuttle for the shadows. He straightened. “These creatures are the young of the Sishmindri. They have laid their eggs in this quiet spot.”

“Oh?”
Is that all?
“But the meat—it’s not toxic?”

“I believe not. But what of that? Surely you would not knowingly consume the flesh of their children?”

“Well. I must confess, I never considered it.” Frowning, Aureste regarded his dinner. He thought of the adult Sishmindris of Belandor House, with their inscrutable golden eyes, their expressionless faces, their coincidental outward resemblance to humankind, and a spontaneous revulsion bubbled inside him. He managed to rise above it. “The creatures are far too valuable to put to such use. I’d hardly venture to guess the worth of tonight’s stew pot—it’s an extravagant feast indeed. That being so, we must savor it to the fullest.”

“You do not mean that. Aureste, Aureste, these are intelligent beings. Do you not understand?”

“Many creatures upon which we feed possess a certain measure of intelligence, or instinct that doubles as intelligence. We devour them with pleasure, all the same. Mind you, I’m not in favor of employing Sishmindris as cattle—inasmuch as they refuse to breed in captivity, the concept is impractical. All I say here and now is that we possess a tasty pot of very costly stew, and it would be a great shame to let it go to waste. Come, reason favors me. You know this.”

His brother cast a pained glance that Aureste hardly allowed himself to see. The thing was done. Innesq would have to reconcile himself.

Innesq did nothing of the sort. For the first time in all his retiring life, he lifted his voice to address a gathering.

“Friends, colleagues, fellow travelers, attend me if you will. We have unwittingly committed a grievous error.”

His oratorical inexperience never revealed itself. His words winged strongly through the firelight.

“We have slaughtered hundreds of young Sishmindris. There is no undoing this, and the deed must lie heavy upon every conscience. But we need not add to our offenses. Let us stop now. Release the captive hatchlings, let them seek the shelter of the tarn. As for those already slain—pour the pot out upon the ground, let the dead merge with the soil, as nature intended, and then let us ask forgiveness. We cannot truly make amends, but this is the least we can do.”

His words reached the ears of all, and registered in the eyes of all. But the listeners’ reactions were difficult to judge. There was no immediate reply, and the fraught silence lengthened.

Into that silence smashed a massive volley of rocks. They flew from the darkness beyond the fire, and they were well aimed. One of the Taerleezi chefs engaged in ladling out stew was struck squarely in the temple. He fell without a sound, bowl and ladle dropping from his hand. Cries arose as stones thudded into heads, limbs, and torsos. One of the Corvestri servants went down, face bloodied. A whizzing missile grazed
Aureste’s shoulder, and he loosed a curse lost in a sudden great gust of noise. A huge cacophony of hoots, croaks, grunts, and hisses arose on all sides. The invisible attacker unmistakably surrounded them.

For the moment no spoken command could be heard, but the Belandor bodyguards were well trained. Already they were grabbing for their crossbows and forming a circle, backs to the fire. The Pridisso and Zovaccio servants were there beside them. The Corvestri attendants, less efficient, were fumbling for their weapons. A rock struck one of them in the right arm, and the bow fell from a suddenly useless hand.

Aureste’s eyes turned instinctively toward Sonnetia Corvestri. An attendant was hurrying her toward the shelter of the Corvestri carriage. She was being properly looked after. He turned to Innesq, who met his regard with an infinitesimal nod. The message was clear. His brother could and would employ arcane power in defense of the expedition. No doubt his fellow arcanists were similarly willing. But even among the most accomplished, results were far from instantaneous. They needed to fortify and prepare themselves. The mental exertion itself was often prolonged, and during this period they remained vulnerable. In the meantime, the rocks were flying.

Drawing a short-bladed sword, Aureste planted himself solidly before Innesq.

The croaks and hoots reached an impassioned crescendo. Out of the blackness beneath the trees erupted a mob of furious Sishmindris. They were broad and brawny, smooth of skin and flat of skull, with eyes of molten gold. They wore no garments of mankind, but did not disdain the weapons of men. Many bore slings, in whose use they had already demonstrated formidable proficiency. Others carried heavy clubs, sharpened wooden stakes, even chunks of stone chipped to an edge and bound to wooden handles.

Never had the Magnifico Aureste beheld Sishmindris bearing arms, although he had heard rumors of such in Vitrisi. Even without the rumors, however, he would not have been
entirely surprised. The cowardice and docility of the Sishmindri nature were widely regarded as axiomatic, but a portion of his mind had always harbored suspicion. Something in him had recognized amphibian treachery.

Deceitful and duplicitous they might be, but still no match for men, and he would have expected little difficulty in defeating them, but for their numbers and their fury. There was no counting them. They were everywhere, on all sides, stabbing and smashing with their sticks and stones; crude weapons, but remarkably effective at close range. Only a few feet away, one of the Taerleezi servants fell beneath the onslaught and disappeared, instantly enveloped in a blur of flailing greenish limbs. To his left, one of his own men went down, pierced clear through with a sharpened wooden stake. Aureste found himself attacked by two of the creatures. He killed them both, and knew a moment’s incredulity, for nothing in his past could have prepared him for the necessity of soiling his sword with the blood of Sishmindris. No time now to ponder the indignity, for another was upon him, swinging mightily at his skull with a club the thickness of a small tree. There was no parrying such a blow, so he dodged with nearly the agility of earlier years, lunged, and drove his blade deep into amphibian vitals. The creature’s death cry was lost in the great surrounding din of croaking rage.

Aureste chanced a quick glance behind him, where Innesq sat motionless in his wheeled chair, eyes open and unseeing, face empty and at peace. He had seen that look many times and knew its meaning. Innesq was elsewhere.

A new note colored the uproar, a surge of excitement or triumph. His glance discovered the source. A hooting troop had taken possession of one of the supply wagons. Now they were emptying it, hurling sacks, barrels, and hampers off into the darkness, presumably into the arms of unseen confederates.

A rock streaking in at an angle missed him by inches, but clanged loudly on the metal frame of Innesq’s chair. The rock was followed by a burly mottled female, stone ax uplifted,
staccato cries bursting from her wide-open mouth. He halted her with a stroke that nearly severed her head from her body.

Something pale slipped weightlessly along the edge of his vision, circling toward his brother. He spun, prepared to kill, and confronted the girl Nissi. She was kneeling beside Innesq, clutching one of his lax hands in both of her own. Her uncanny eyes were closed, her pallid little face calm and still. Only her lips moved soundlessly in the midst of the tumult. No threat there, quite the contrary. Their conjoined power was greater than the sum of its parts. And the other arcanists—were they similarly engaged? His eyes swept the firelit circle, but he caught no sight of the Corvestris or either of the Taerleezis. Something like doubt or misgiving shot through him. He realized then that arcane intervention was essential. Without it, the vastly outnumbered humans would be overwhelmed—by Sishmindris, of all things.

A concerted assault took down another two of the ill-trained Corvestri guards. There was an obvious weak spot in the human line of defense, and the attackers bore down on it. He could marshal the guards if he could reach them, but a hissing enemy advance upon Innesq kept Aureste pinned. There were two, then four. They had clubs, and one of them wielded a steel blade presumably snatched from some dead man’s hand.

A precise horizontal stroke sliced a Sishmindri throat, and a jet of alien blood sprayed Aureste’s face. As he wheeled to plunge his sword into the nearest greenish belly, a glancing blow clipped his ribs, and his lungs seemed to freeze. For an endless moment he struggled to breathe. A sharpened stake drove at his midsection, and he shifted a slow, lead-weighted blade to parry the thrust. Another thrust, another parry, and still he could not catch his breath.

If he died now, Innesq would follow in an instant, and then all the others.
Sonnetia
.

It was going to happen. He could not defeat the amphibians. There were too many of them.

The Belandor guard fighting beside him fell, skull crushed. Croaking Sishmindris converged on the fresh break in the human circle.

He willed his lungs to expand and to fill with air. He willed his arm to greater speed and strength. For some seconds it worked, and twice more his sword thrust home. But renewal was brief, and he soon found his breath coming in gasps.

It might have been misperception, a trick of rushing blood and heated exertions, but it seemed to him then that the air he gulped down into his lungs was exceptionally cold. The atmosphere throughout the journey had rasped with the raw chill of early springtime, but now it stabbed with winter’s malice. The sweat on his forehead was icy.

It was not imagination. The air had chilled to freezing in seconds. Despite violent exercise, his teeth were starting to chatter. The fingers of his gloveless hands were losing sensation.

The effect of the change upon the cold-blooded, unclothed Sishmindris was profound and immediate. Within seconds their energy flagged, their movements slowed, and they became delightfully easy to kill. Aureste dispatched several with gusto. His spirits, always resilient, had rebounded fully, and he enjoyed reinvigoration. When his latest adversary attempted to retreat, predatory instinct drove him forward a few paces in pursuit, and the air about him warmed and softened at once. Instantly he drew back to the frigid zone. No question, of course, what had happened. A bubble of freezing atmosphere—uncomfortable to warm-blooded humans, paralyzing to amphibians—had been created by arcane art. Innesq’s art, or else Innesq’s and Nissi’s. Or perhaps the others, wherever they were, had joined in. It wasn’t clear, and it didn’t matter. The Sishmindris had been thwarted.

They had the wit to recognize as much themselves. Their wild vociferation sank to bitter hoots. They fell back. A low, maledictory hissing accompanied their retreat.

It was over. The campsite lay in shambles, littered with the
dead bodies of men and Sishmindris. Aureste turned to his brother.

Innesq was again present and aware, albeit pale and drained. His eyes traveled the corpse-strewn vista and closed briefly. A muted whimper caught his attention, and he looked down to discover Nissi crouched beside his chair, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Her shoulders were shaking, and tears gushed from her eyes. He touched her spindrift hair consolingly.

“Innesq, what have you—” Aureste began. His brother’s imperative gesture silenced him.

As Innesq wheeled his chair about, Nissi rose to her feet. She wrapped her hand in a fold of his cloak. Together they retreated in silence.

Aureste shrugged. Innesq was always exhausted and often melancholy in the aftermath of arcane endeavor. He would recover soon enough; he always did. In the meantime, practical concerns pressed. The chattering of his teeth and the numbness of his fingers told him that the frigid bubble enclosing the camp remained in place. Uncomfortable, but advantageous; so long as it lasted, they were safe from any renewed Sishmindri assault. There was time to muster the remaining able-bodied guards, post fresh sentries, patch and bandage the wounded, assess losses. These matters occupied Aureste’s attention throughout ensuing hours. During that time, he glimpsed not a single arcanist of the group. Probably they had all contributed to the creation of the bubble, and now all required rest and quiet. Saving his own brother, he could happily have dispensed with them altogether, for they were an alien, peculiar, and generally unappealing lot. They had their uses, though—no denying that. But for arcane intervention upon this night, the peevish Sishmindris would surely have slaughtered the entire party.